But the extra manpower came too late for many abuse victims.
In at least one case reviewed by New Times, it's clear that crimes occurred after an initial report was sent to MCSO detectives.
At a December news conference, Joe Arpaio listens to questions about botched sex-crimes investigations under his watch.
![Levalya Beyart of El Mirage says that after her daughter reported being raped in 2007, the Sheriff's Office told her, "This [is] not a priority."](http://media.phoenixnewtimes.com/joe-arpaio-s-office-says-to-hell-with-the-children.7636314.40.jpg)
Jamie Peachey
Levalya Beyart of El Mirage says that after her daughter reported being raped in 2007, the Sheriff's Office told her, "This [is] not a priority."
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After a father was accused of beating his 12-year-old boy in late 2005, sheriff's detectives received the case but did not investigate. State Child Protective Services contacted the Sheriff's Office about the case the following year, forwarding tape-recorded interviews as evidence. One of the tapes contained an allegation that an 8-year-old girl in the same household had been sexually abused, but, again, no follow-up was done.
A report on the case, forwarded in April 2006 by CPS, details an allegation that both of the boy's parents had threatened to kill him, holding a knife to his throat and beating him with a stick. CPS noted that an examination of the boy's shoulder blade showed an unhealed fracture.
The sex-crimes unit gave back the file to El Mirage police in August 2007, "with apparently no work having been done." The case still is active.
In other cases, it's possible that more abuse occurred after the MCSO took a case — or, at the least, that swift investigation would have led to arrests.
One example: A mom took her three girls, ages 4 to 10, to a medical center in June 2007 after they'd complained of vaginal burning. "The victims reported that their live-in step-grandfather — identity known — had touched their vaginas and inserted his fingers on multiple occasions," a police report states.
By December 2007, the case still hadn't been worked.
A few months later, Bruce Tucker, the former Dowling investigator, was assigned the internal sex-crimes probe. Then, after working on it for more than a year, he was assigned by MCSO Chief Deputy Hendershott to work with the sheriff's private lawyer, Dennis Wilenchik, on the defense against Dowling's lawsuits.
As Tucker and Hendershott drove from Wilenchik's office on July 31, the chief deputy told Tucker he didn't want anything to interfere with work on the Dowling suits. Since Sergeant Seagraves was a principal in Tucker's probe into the sex-crimes unit, Tucker was ordered to stop work on it.
It's unclear what Sheriff Arpaio knew about the stalled investigation, but he and Hendershott had near-daily briefings.
The investigation into who gets blamed for the sex-crimes debacle might have been put off forever. But in September 2010, Deputy Chief Frank Munnell, interviewed by the Attorney General's Office for its criminal investigation into the aforementioned campaign-finance scandal, dropped his bombshell memo.
The Munnell memo and the resulting investigation by Paul Babeu's office provided many new details on how Arpaio's office had messed up the sex-crimes cases. In addition, a staggering amount of corruption in the MCSO was revealed. The sheriff had no choice but to fire two of his most trusted aides, Hendershott and Deputy Chief Larry Black, for a raft of well-publicized ethical and potentially criminal violations.
Famously, he claimed he had been "duped" by Hendershott.
Now, Arpaio claims he was duped by his sex-crimes unit, which supposedly should have worked harder despite the minuscule resources he'd provided.
The Sheriff's Office has yet to reveal details of its investigation into the sex-crimes debacle, but the public soon should learn more about the scandal. Because of the Munnell memo, the internal investigation was restarted sometime in 2011.
At the January 31 hearing before the Board of Supervisors, Deputy Chief Sheridan said at least 10,000 pages of material from the long-running probe were under review by the County Attorney's Office.
Sheridan downplayed the enormity of the problem, claiming that only 15 sex-crimes cases countywide — not including the El Mirage cases — hadn't been investigated.
It's difficult to believe Sheridan's figure, considering the scope of the scandal in just El Mirage, where serious problems were noted with 43 of 51 cases assigned to the sex-crimes unit.
Whatever the real story, efforts supposedly are under way by both the Sheriff's Office and the El Mirage Police Department to shore up badly investigated cases. So far, officials say, 19 reopened cases have resulted in prosecutions, though they haven't divulged which cases they are.
Sheridan claims that new policies and training procedures have been put in place "so the problem does not surface again."
But Arpaio and the public have not heard the last of the sex-crimes mess.
In December, the U.S. Department of Justice issued findings in a long-running civil investigation of the MCSO, claiming that Arpaio's department has discriminated against Hispanics and committed the "most egregious case" of racial profiling in U.S. law enforcement history. A report on the findings says the Justice Department still is examining whether the failure to investigate sex crimes was because of Arpaio's "culture of bias" against Hispanics.
The Justice Department also still is probing criminal allegations that Arpaio abused his power.
Now, with all his baggage, Arpaio has entered campaign mode, hoping to ride out the criticism and — at 80 years old — get re-elected to another four-year term.
"I've been praying for a phone call like this," a woman in Chicago tells New Times.
The woman is the mother of a 13-year-old girl who claimed that she'd been molested repeatedly by her father in 2006.
